uninstalling an old version

[Bob Tennent]

 >| > Hmm. So if one has installed TL-2020 (even the
 >| > pretest) and then uninstalls TL-2019, the symlinks to
 >| > the 2020 bins are removed? That doesn't seem right.
 >|
 >|Of course it's right. Symlinks either point to TL2019
 >|or to TL2020. If you remove them no distribution is
 >|accessible.

So why remove them? Surely rm -rf /usr/local/texlive/XXXX
doesn't remove symlinks.  And certainly don't remove
symlinks to 2020 binaries if asked to uninstall TL-2019.

 >|Bob, when you install TL2019 all the symlinks point to
 >|TL2019. If you later install TL2020 all symlinks point to
 >|TL2020 and TL2019 is inaccessible. If you ask TL2020's
 >|tlmgr to remove the symlinks it removes them but doesn't
 >|create new symlinks pointing TL2019 because TL2020 is not
 >|aware of your TL2019 installation.

That's not my scenario. I asked the 2019 tlmgr to uninstall
TL-2019. I didn't ask it to remove existing symlinks to
TL-2020, much less create new ones.

 >|You cannot use the "create symlinks" option if you intend
 >|to install more than one instance of TeX Live. This
 >|cannot work.

I don't see why it wouldn't work if uninstalling didn't
remove symlinks to a more recent version.

Bob